PS3 Titles Probably Won’t Be Included in PlayStation 4 Plus

Streaming games is going to become the norm in 2014 and a big part of that will be thanks to Gaikai and Sony. If you’re not willing to pay, though, don’t expect a full gaming experience. Sony have said that they’re not entirely sure how they’re going to handle the price model for PS3 streaming over Gaikai, but that it probably won’t be included in PlayStation Plus (or at least, not as we know it). Fergal Gara, of SCEE, spoke about how things may be handled when the service goes live next year.

“We announced that 2014 will start to see that introduced for PS3 titles in the US, and we’ll start to see a gradual increase in consoles, titles, devices and countries involved as we go forward, so there is a plan there to bring the PlayStation experience to more devices out of the cloud using the Gaikai that will broaden over time.

“Will that be part of PlayStation Plus? I genuinely don’t know. Will that require some other, different charging mechanism? Perhaps. We just haven’t sat down to answer that question yet.”

The implication here is that you’re unlikely to get far on Gaikai with just a PlayStation Plus account, although I’d expect access to certain games as a kind of teaser (probably the Uncharted trilogy, or something from Ratchet and Clank Future). It also implies that this won’t be a “launch and we’re done” service, and we can only hope that Gaikai gets worldwide support so that everybody sees the potential, as opposed to the often weak release schedule of the current stores.